I'm bored at work on a Friday so I figured I'd make this thread for fun. Let's suppose for a minute and the rumors are true and Wire are indeed at work on a revamped D&E/4th album for release in 2012. Pick your favorite tracks that are floating out there in the ether and assemble what you think would be the best tracklisting from those songs.

Ah this recurring thread...I'd love to see what they'd do with Eastern Standard, ZEGK HOQP and Eels Sang Lino. ZH is probably more confined to the 'moment' than the others, but looking at where The Other Window started and ended up, for example, I think ES and ESL had/have real scope for adaptation into something really interesting in the studio

Can I put in a request for the immediate withdrawal of 5/10 from the set list and for it not to be considered for any possibility of a recording. It has no redeeming features, it's a dirge with a bell.

It seems to me then that 5/10 needs to be speeded up, given the Underwater Experiences treatment, maybe even renamed 9/10? Or possibly go the whole hog and call it 1? (That's a joke - sort of - for numerate Wire fans).

I thought the current train of thought was that we might be treated to some kind of a reworked video extravaganza (?!) - remember what was done with IBTABA? Wasn't that where live audio recordings were taken as raw material, used as the starting point for remodelled and remolded pieces? Couldn't that be done with high-quality video footage..? Either way, that doesn't answer the question of which order the tracks would be heard. Maybe the work would feature an in-built default shuffle mode, so you couldn't know which track was coming up next!Incidentally, one piece from the D&E LP, Revealing Trade Secrets (one of my faves - simple, short and melodic) has, to my knowledge, already been slightly referenced in recent years: check out the line 'panoramic features' from Desert Diving, originally from RTS...

Wire don't exactly have the best track record when it comes to sticking with their own deadlines (see: The Legal Bootleg Series) so I'm not surprised. The new tour dates are imminent so hopefully before then maybe?

I'm sure we'll hear soon enough. I like the mystery and anticipation...you don't get much of that in this instant digital age do you?

Still not exactly sure what's in the pipeline.

To recap, there's been talk of a 'follow up to RBT' which suggests completely new material, there was also mention last year that a better recording of the D&E tapes had been found and that was coming out maybe as a box set, and of course since the last tour consisted of lots of D&E material I would assume new recorded versions of that would be in the offing. Maybe all three. Maybe they've gone Dubstep?

If new better sounding live recordings have surfaced those should be offered for free to whoever purchased the legal bootleg series. We were promised a "much improved" version of the Janette Cochran show and instead what we got was the same awful quality as the turns & strokes recording. Surely we can't be expected to make three purchases in order to get passable versions of those songs.

Just to put my twopenneth in about the Jeanette Cochrane recordings. I spoke to Colin about these just before release and the quality is better in terms of the generation of tape used for the Bootleg Series than that for Turns and Strokes. For the latter we had to do some serious remastering to get it to sound as good as it did. Tape speed, hiss, distortion adjustments. At the time it was the only copy I could find.

Seems only one person recorded the show, and Colin was able to find 1 or 2 generation copy, so in sonic terms it sounds as it sounds and BS does sound better than T&S. The only upgrade was in terms of less hiss and degeneration from copying.

With regards to the Document & Eyewitness Electric Ballroom recordings. The full concert recording exists on mixing desk reel to reel. This was used for the D&EW album but was only recorded on one channel of the tape in error. So its all in mono.

This tape was the source for both D&EW and T&S and a master DAT and safety CDR's have been made.

Whether Wire release this recording or re-record tracks from this period is the big 'secret'.